Exclusion Zone

by Exclusion Zone (retail) (epub)

  Noel’s voice broke the silence. ‘Right, we’re not going to get past these guys unseen. Let’s see if we can take them out of the equation.’

  I flicked the radar into air-to-air mode as I set the Tempest soaring upwards. The attack was a gamble, but one we had to take. If we could kill the Migs, the ships would be far more vulnerable.

  ‘Lock our man up, Jane.’

  ‘Locked up.’

  The target designator on the screen changed shape, showing a positive lock. My fingers closed around the trigger and our only Skyflash left the rails in a blaze of flame and smoke.

  I could tell from the display that Rees and Shark had also fired their missiles. The enemy obviously knew as well. As I watched the designators on the screen, the two Migs turned tail and began to streak away from us.

  Within a few more seconds it was clear that the gamble had failed. The missiles ran out of power in their vain pursuit of the Migs and began to plunge downwards towards the sea.

  I could hear Noel breathing hard as he made contact again. ‘It’s down to iron bombs and good luck now. Let’s take it back to low-level.’

  ‘Forty miles to target.’

  ‘Combat power.’ I rammed the throttles forward. ‘Arming weapons, stick top live.’

  ‘Falcon Two. Trace left two o’clock. Fifteen miles.’

  The enemy Migs were returning to the fight. With no radar missiles, we were at their mercy. Our only tactic now was to try to evade them. ‘Kick right twenty degrees.’

  The jet lurched as I pulled a hard turn. I held it for twelve seconds – two miles – then came back on track, still moving in towards the Argentinian ships.

  ‘Thirty-five miles.’ We were barely four minutes from our target. Then the radar warner began to clamour.

  ‘Spike!’ Jane shouted.

  ‘Notch right.’ I hurled the jet into another hard G-turn at ninety degrees to our previous course, trying to hide the jet in the radar clutter generated by the sea. Vibrations began at the wingtips and intensified as they travelled through the wings and fuselage, making the whole aircraft judder under the force of the turn. I held it until I heard, ‘Screen clear,’ from Jane, her voice straining with the effort of speaking under such heavy G.

  I stayed on that course for a few more seconds, then swung back on to the intercept course for the enemy ships. There was no point in trying to disguise our target. There was nothing else there.

  Every instinct told me to gain height and confront the Argentine jets, not hide among the radar clutter of the ocean surface, but our only targets were the two ships.

  I was making frantic mental calculations, trying to work out if we would reach the guardship before the Migs could get visual with us. I thought we would just make it, but I also knew that the ship would already have been alerted. Every gun- and missile-crew would now be on station, raking the sky for a sight of us. Any hopes of a surprise attack had gone.

  My thoughts were again interrupted by the radar warner. ‘Spike! Spike!’

  ‘Break right. Chaff.’

  Jane punched the button and I caught a sparkle of light from the corner of my eye as clouds of silver foil billowed out in our wake from the dispensers beneath the wingtips.

  In air combat I had discovered there was little time for fear, my attention fully occupied by the adrenalin surge of combat and the physical effort of fighting the jet, trying to outwit my opponent, attack him as he was attacking me.

  Now I felt helpless, pinned to the surface of the ocean, trying to hold my concentration on the attack against the guardship and ignore the threat from the jets above us.

  ‘Missile! Ten o’clock.’

  I swung my gaze frantically left and caught a glimpse of a white trail in the sky. ‘Chaff! Chaff!’ I pushed the nose down even further until the wind whipping the caps of the waves caused the canopy to be covered with spray.

  I held my breath and waited for the missile. There was an eruption from behind and below us, a waterspout spiralling up into the air. The missile had lost its lock and impacted with the sea a bare four hundred yards away. I exhaled with relief and eased the stick back a touch, lifting us a few more feet above the waves.

  ‘Target twenty-five miles. In your eleven. Locking it up.’

  I nudged the stick left a little. Jane’s voice sounded cool and assured, as if the water splash had been no more than a whale sounding.

  The dawn had crept steadily around the horizon. Even due west, the lowering sky was now brighter, flecked with long streaks of cloud reddening in the sunlight.

  ‘Twenty miles, on your nose.’

  I stared ahead, through the green target box, straining my eyes. Through the curtain of sea spray, I glimpsed the dark shapes of the two Tempests weaving over the wave tops. I could see nothing beyond them but empty sea and sky.

  I glanced at the tactical display. Our aircraft symbols began to diverge as we split for the attack, approaching the target from different directions in the hope of confusing the defenders. Our attack runs would be separated by thirty seconds, the minimum time to allow the shrapnel from the previous jet’s bombs to disperse before the next one overflew the target. Any closer and we would be flying through an airborne cloud of razor-edged metal fragments.

  ‘Fifteen miles.’

  I strained my eyes again. We were less than ninety seconds flying time from it. Then I saw a smudge of smoke, a darker streak against the grey of the sky. ‘Yes! Visual.’ The green target symbols glowed in the head-up display in front of me. They danced before my eyes as the jet bucked and tossed in the turbulence of the gusting winds.

  ‘Range ten miles, speed six hundred knots, height fifty feet. Time to target sixty seconds.’

  Two miles ahead, Noel was already rising from the surface to one hundred and fifty feet, skimming the superstructure of the guardship, his finger poised on the bomb release. The sky ahead of us lit up. Missiles, tracer and a barrage of Triple-A flashed upwards.

  Then there was a brighter flash and a cloud of smoke and steam. It was impossible to tell what caused it.

  A few seconds later, I saw the dark shape of Shark’s jet streaking over the ship. A tiny black oval detached itself from the jet, arcing down towards the sea. In its path I could see the superstructure of the guardship, stark against the sky. There were more missile streaks and a barrage of Triple-A, then a blast and gouts of belching black smoke.

  ‘Strike one! Shark’s hit it,’ Jane yelled.

  His jet was now almost invisible, hidden by the barrage of anti-aircraft fire. I watched it sweeping towards me over the surface of the sea, a typhoon of fire and smoke. It seemed impossible that anything could fly through it unscathed. I focused my gaze on the HUD, trying to blank my mind to what was waiting ahead.

  ‘Range coming down.’

  ‘Stick top’s live, speed’s good, timing’s good, height’s good.’

  ‘Target’s slightly left,’ Jane said. ‘Got it?’

  ‘Locked on, looking good, looking good.’

  The green symbol in the HUD crept towards the target mark. I hauled back on the stick, the throttles jammed against the stops. ‘Committing, committing…’ The green symbols merged into one and I stabbed the firing button.

  There was a momentary delay – although I committed the weapon to fire, the computer chose the perfect moment to launch the bomb – then the jet lurched as one thousand pounds of high explosive came off the rail, backed by all the velocity that our six-hundred-knot speed could provide.

  As we flew through the barrage of flak, I threw us into a screaming dive, away from danger. The horizon disappeared for a moment and my head was locked against the side of the canopy by the G-force. I eased the pressure on the stick a fraction and craned my neck to look back towards the target. Then the whole world seemed to erupt in a blizzard of fire.

  ‘Chaff! Flares!’ I banked hard left and forced the nose down again, gaining speed and bringing me closer to the safety of the sea. Torrents of fire followed me as I
jinked and swerved, hurling the jet around.

  There was a crack and a hole the size of a telephone directory was punched in the wing. I felt the drag and the vibration as the jet wallowed, then flew on as the fly-by-wire system corrected the instability.

  ‘Missile launch!’

  ‘Chaff. Flares. Chaff. Break left.’ I hauled the jet into a screaming turn so close to the waves I could see the thin sheen of oil glistening on the surface.

  ‘Break right. Chaff. Flares.’ I hurled the jet the other way. The groan from Jane, the thud of her helmet against the side of the canopy and the sound of flares punching out from the rack came simultaneously. There was a flash of grey-white and a missile streaked towards us, so close it seemed impossible that its proximity fuse wouldn’t detonate. Then it had flashed past, disappearing towards the horizon. There was no time for thought, every move was an instinctive, animal reaction to danger.

  ‘Spike! Spike! Bogie, two o’clock high. On you! On you!’

  ‘Where is he?’ I cranked my head round, searching the sky.

  ‘Coming down on you. In your two. On you!’

  The Migs were returning to the attack. I took a deep breath and held the jet in straight and level flight.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Jane said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘It’s too late to evade, we’re too low and slow. I’m going to try to make him think we haven’t seen him.’

  ‘You’re what? Shit. Three miles.’

  I armed the Sidewinder, its familiar growling almost drowned in the shriek of the radar warner. I pushed the seeker head as far right as it would go and then held my breath. I kept my head rigid, tracking the enemy jets with my eyes, as if even the faintest movement of my head in the cockpit would alert them.

  The Mig pilot would want to make sure of his kill, holding his own heat-seeking missile shot until…

  ‘Chaff, flares.’ I ripped the throttles back, trying to mask the heat source of our engines from the enemy’s missile, and swung the jet hard right to face up to him, fighting the encroaching greyout. I counted to three, then pushed the throttles forward again, against the stops.

  The Mig loomed in the canopy, screeching towards us. I saw a missile leap from it and thrash across the sky, but the bone-crushing break, the chaff and flares had done enough. It slid past our nose, then the dark batwing shape of the Mig itself was upon us, so close its shadow darkened the canopy. The Tempest bucked in its jet wash, then it was past.

  As the Mig hit our wake, it suddenly slipped sideways and nosedived as the pilot lost control. At low-level, there was no escape. It hit the sea, exploding in a ball of flame and spray.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was no time to spare the pilot a thought. ‘Where’s the other Mig?’ For a moment I saw nothing, then I glimpsed a silver chevron against the dark grey of the sea. Two objects cartwheeled away in the wake of the jet, sparkling in the light.

  ‘He’s bugging out, heading for home,’ Jane said. ‘He’s probably out of gas.’

  I glanced down at our own fuel gauge. We were guzzling our spare fuel and could only spend a few more minutes in the area. I craned my neck round. ‘Did we hit the target?’

  ‘Yes. He’s making a lot of smoke and losing speed.’

  I risked pulling up a little higher above the surface to look back. Clouds of black smoke were billowing from the port side of the guardship forward of the bridge. ‘We haven’t sunk the bastard though.’

  ‘Missile launch!’

  A column of fire rose vertically from the destroyer, looped like a giant question mark and then arrowed away.

  ‘Chaff. Flares. Break right.’ I cursed myself for my stupidity. My curiosity to see the effects of my handiwork could have got us killed. As I swung the jet left and right, I forced my head round trying to locate the missile. I could see no trace of it. ‘Where is it? Where the hell is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve lost it.’

  The sweat was cold on my forehead as the seconds crawled by. There was a sudden blast in the sky ahead and to my right. One of the other Tempests disintegrated in a spray of fragments.

  I felt sick as I thumbed the radio. ‘Falcon One? Two?’

  Infinitely weary, Noel’s voice came up through the static. ‘Shark’s gone. He did his job though. The guardship’s finished.’

  I swung my head to look back at the ship. Black smoke was still billowing from it and it was now motionless in the water and listing heavily to port. Its last defiant shot had been the one that killed Shark.

  The Eva Peron was already visible on the horizon. ‘Let’s get that cruiser.’

  ‘What if they try to pick up survivors from the guardship?’

  Noel’s voice hardened. ‘Then it’ll be an easier target.’

  I cut the radio connection. ‘He won’t be that, whatever happens.’ The cruiser, like the guardship, was a former Royal Navy ship. In theory it was less well defended against air attack. It had no fixed surface-to-air missiles but it had a dozen Bofors guns and if the ship’s armoury did not already include handheld SAMs, the troops embarked on it were certain to have them. In any event, the sheer volume of fire that those troops could generate simply by standing on deck and firing into the air was enough to deter all but the bravest pilot. I had my doubts how well that description fitted me.

  ‘Screen clear,’ Jane said. ‘At least their Air Force seems to be staying at home now.’

  ‘I don’t think they’d be so cautious if they knew that all we had left was two aircraft.’

  We dropped back into low-level, flying line astern behind Noel and Rees, and again began the countdown, arming the weapons and checking off the height, speed and range as we closed with the target.

  The Eva Peron was an intimidating sight, twice the length of its guardship, its profile bristling with gun turrets. As Rees set his jet rising from low-level to begin its attack run, smoke bursts immediately dotted the sky ahead of us. Sparse at first, they increased until it seemed that the whole sky was filled with fire. I gulped a mouthful of air, swallowed, then eased the stick back to begin our own run.

  ‘Eight seconds from target.’

  I had been scared by the blizzards of fire above the guardship. What I now saw rising from the cruiser froze the pit of my stomach. The ship’s five-inch guns opened up, pouring out a torrent of rounds at one-second intervals, as precise as the ticking of a clock. Each one detonated in a clump of grey-black smoke. Around them were sparkling chains of flak bursts and the blue, white, yellow and green of tracer.

  Smoke from the bursts of Triple-A hung like a fog over the ship, but through the wraiths I could see the decks black with men, all of them firing upwards, creating a curtain of lead through which we would have to fly.

  As the other jet disappeared into the heart of the inferno, I saw the SAM launches: one, two, three, half a dozen, maybe more, streaked upwards. ‘Commit—’ I could hear the fear in Rees’ voice. ‘Abort! Abort! Abort!’

  Before he had finished speaking, I had jammed back the stick, pressing it flat against my stomach as I pulled the jet up and over, away from the danger. I was flying almost inverted, the canopy no more than fifty feet above the sea. I held combat power for a few more seconds, until the last bursts of Triple-A had faded behind us, then eased back the throttles.

  ‘Falcon One?’

  There was silence.

  ‘He’s still on the screen,’ Jane said.

  ‘Noel? Rees? Are you okay?’

  For a moment there was only the hiss of static in reply, then I heard Rees’ voice, slow and weak. ‘I’m hit, Sean, my shoulder. But I’m okay, I think. Wait.’

  I counted the seconds of silence until his voice came through again. ‘We’re going back in.’

  ‘Let me lead it.’

  He cut me off. ‘Beginning attack run.’

  Once more as his jet lifted from the surface in the climb to launch the attack, the sky erupted with bursts of Triple-A and small-arms fire. Two
more SAMs were launched at him and he threw the jet left and right, dodging and weaving towards the target. Then he was through, banking steeply away as the bomb detonated. There was a vivid orange flash, a cloud of grey smoke and a huge waterspout erupted thirty yards from the side of the ship. A shock wave sped outwards through the sea.

  I swore and thumped the side of the cockpit in my frustration. ‘He’s missed.’

  ‘He had big balls even to try it with a wounded shoulder,’ Jane said. ‘Let’s just make sure we make our own shot count.’

  I lowered my gaze, peering into the HUD and began the attack run.

  ‘Six seconds.’

  The sky ahead erupted with smoke and fire.

  ‘Height’s good, speed’s good.’

  The green symbols on the screen moved together as slowly as grains of sand trickling down the face of a dune.

  ‘Four seconds.’

  Lines of tracer groped their way towards the jet.

  ‘Looking good. Bringing the height up now.’

  As we climbed from thirty to ninety feet to deliver the bomb, a SAM was launched, a black stovepipe blasting upwards, trailing its guidance wire.

  ‘Chaff. Flares.’ The symbols blurred in the HUD as I threw the jet from side to side. ‘Pod’s active,’ Jane called. The jamming system began an electronic battle with the missile’s guidance. It slid towards us, then jerked away, blasting past the wingtip.

  The HUD symbols cleared and coalesced. ‘Committing.’ I jabbed the button and the jet bucked immediately as the bomb came free. I pressed the Tempest down as the superstructure of the ship flashed beneath us, trying to ignore the hail of fire still thrashing the air around us. I craned my neck to stare down at the ship. I could see their soldiers staring upwards and I looked directly into the faces of the men I was trying to kill.

  There was a pause, then the foredeck of the cruiser crumpled. There was a flash of red and yellow fire, a gout of black smoke and then a deafening roar.

  I stilled Jane’s whoop of triumph. ‘It’s not finished. We’ve done some damage but it’s still making headway.’ I pulled us up and away from the last pursuing bursts of Triple-A.